he was the author of much of mitt romney's economic policies. a good friend of the show. jean, let me start with you. tax increases on people making more than 250,000 a year. let's use that as a number. it might be 400,000, it might be half a million. it might be a million. let's take $250,000. if you increase taxes, the marge nalt tax rate from 35% to 39.6% on that group of people, does it hurt the economy? >> i'm going to use estimates from the congressional budget office. a nonpartisan score keeper for congress. they found if you let the bush tax cuts on higher earners, it would boost the economy almost as much as if you let everybody's bush tax cuts stay in place. there's little difference on how much would you help the economy if you let the bush tax cuts stay in place for everyone or for most people. in that sense it sounds like it wouldn't have a huge effect on the economic recovery. having said that i think if you asked most economists and tax experts, all things being equal is it better to have lower rates or higher rates, they would say probably better to have l